The story of a retired crazy who seems to be able to find one adventure after another.

We don’t have reservations for the ferry crossing to Blanc Sablon so the drill is to show up at the ticket office early, get in line and wait for the office to open. When the office does open, usually at 8 AM, you get a ticket for the position in line to actually buy the ticket. Then you comeback at some time later to get the ferry ticket. But because the ferry is scheduled to depart at 8 AM, we have to be at the office at 6 AM to get the line ticket and then return at 7 AM to get the ticket.

I set an alarm for 5:30 and when the alarm does go off I start punching the snooze button. Finally, out of bed at 5:45. Over to the office at 5:55. Ticket woman arrives promptly at 6 and we get the line tickets for J and I and for M/M. “Come back at 7.” “The ferry IS going today?” “The captain will decide by 7 and then we’ll know.”

We are back at 7 and, yes, the ferry is going. Yesterday, we saw on Twitter that the ferry was stopped twice because of the ice in the channel. The ferry made it but the was some question about whether or not the ferry would run today. I guess that’s the daily question as long as there is pack ice in the channel.

We drive down to the ferry staging area and finally see the ferry and the water in the harbor. The harbor is clear of ice. There is some windblown ice on the far side of the bay but there isn’t any ice at the ferry landing and none out in the channel that we can see from the staging area.

We load the vehicles and move up to the lounge area to get comfortable for the 2 hour crossing. We depart just about on schedule. In 2 hours we’ll be on the Trans Labrador Highway.

Well, maybe not. About 30 minutes out of St. Barbe we start encountering ice flows and in just a few more minutes we are cutting our way through the pack ice which completely spans the channel following a Canadian Coast Guard ice-breaker.

The ice breaker is about 500 meters ahead of the ferry and from the front lounge we can see it making what looks like a wide corridor through the pack ice. But as soon as the ice-breaker passes the ice starts to close back in behind the ice-breaker. It’s really to cold to spend any time out on the deck observation areas so we wait listening for the occasional thump of broken ice against the hull of the ferry.

The the kitchen crew at the from of the main lounge runs to the side windows. Seals on the ice. As the ferry passes by the vibrations of the ice-breaker and the ferry frighten the seals and the scoot away from the ferry. A few hundred meters away from the ice-breaker track there’s a pack of maybe a 100 seals clearly just lounging on the pack ice.

There’s probably a case of unintended consequences at work here. The seals obviously are rightly afraid of the ships and in the water, the ships are no danger to them. They just swim away or dive out of the way. On the ice, however, it is much more difficult for the seals to move and when the ferry comes close to them they slowly wriggle away from the ship.

But the open channel lures the seals right back. They need some break in the ice to get into the water to hunt and feed and the channel cut by the ice-breaker makes that much easier. If the open water wasn’t such a lure, they would learn to avoid the area where the channel is broken. My guess is that there is much ado about nothing as far as the seals are concerned. In any case, they are an amusing distraction.

We get to the Blanc Sablon ferry landing. The ice-breaker has made a pass close to the ferry landing but from here the ferry has to do it on its own. We had loaded from the bow so we will be unloading from the stern. And watching the approach to the landing from the stern observation deck, it’s hard to see how we are going to get through the ice jam between the ferry and the landing. We haven’t heard of any failed landings but…

Of course, the captain and crew do this all winter long so there much be a way to do this. But it’s not obvious to us. The ferry gets close enough to the landing to get some heavy hawsers to the workers on shore. They put the hawsers on the pilings on the landing and the crew uses big deck winches to pull the ferry closer to the landing.

Then they lock the winches and the captain runs up the propeller rpms and the ice jam starts to move away from the landing. It’s hard to see at first but slowly the ice start to move. They repeat this procedure three more times moving the ferry closer between ice clearing attempts.

Eventually enough of the ice moved out of the way and the ferry makes the landing. This is obviously something they have to do all winter and I’m sure it’s second nature to the crew but to us it really interesting to watch.

We get to the truck and unload. We’re on land again and the Trans Labrador Highway starts here.